Lent, Sunday 5B: Read - Jer 31:31-34; Heb 5:7-9; Jn 12:20-33
This morning, we heard the sobering statistics of how many have died in the present war with Iraq.
Indeed, among the many harrowing aspects of terrorism and war is the fact that they thrust upon us a keener focus on
our own mortality. Normally speaking, we acknowledge what St. Francis calls “sorella morte”, “sister death”,
only in an abstract way. We know it’s there, we know it’s coming, but we do not dwell on it. For many people,
for a good part of their lives, it is possible to feel immortal, even physically. When you are young, you can do what you
like, for as long as you like, whenever you like. Yet, all of us, sooner or later, must face the truth, and face it personally:
death is ineluctable. Philosophers, artists, musicians and psychologists will elaborate for us a whole variety of understandings
of death. Some are dreadfully oppressive and depressing, some are palliative and yet others are pragmatic, dramatic or satirical.
But when all is said, sung and done, there is almost nothing more personal than one’s own death and one’s own
acceptance or denial of its approach. Whether it comes suddenly or not, there is deep within the consciousness of the human
spirit a realization that neither our love nor our heroism can deliver us from dying.
The times in which we have been living have to a great extent expelled religion from being of any relevance to how
we live. And we need to ask ourselves honestly to what degree this is true, or we wish it were true, in our own lives. But
if religion -consciously or unconsciously, partially or completely- is excised like a cancer which consumes the energies of
our “joie de vivre”, then religion’s answers to the great questions of life are also cut away. And the greatest
of these questions is death. The power of technology and science can soothe that aching question only for so long; the joys
of human existence can provide comfort for a time; but the masquerade of a man-made immortality must give way to the power
of what it most denies and, without God or religion, death itself has the greater claim to immortality.
And it is no use inventing religion to kid ourselves; if we invent it, then it is just another ploy of our own self-deception.
Man can make a religion out of anything, but so long as it comes from him it is no more than idolatry. When man makes a god
of himself, however carefully he dresses it up or smartly he calls it (“secularism”, “humanism”, etc.),
it is no more use to him than the reflection Narcissus saw of himself in the water. Indeed, it could lead man more quickly
to death by drawing him in so as to drown in the poisoned waters of his own self-absorption, just as it happened to Narcissus.
So, even if it is just by logic, man needs the immortal to deliver him from death. But that logic does not itself deliver
us: it only opens us to the Deliverer. As believers in the Triune God revealed through Jesus Christ, we proclaim that death
has been destroyed in its claim to subject mankind to unending nothingness. That destruction took place in the body, blood,
soul and divinity of the Son of God made man for our sake. Hence we need to consider soberly what it is we are doing when
we receive Communion. That He might destroy death from the inside, Jesus took on our mortal flesh and by surrendering Himself
to death in sinless love for us and for the Father, He entered and destroyed the power of hell. In the resurrection, the Father
responds to the self-surrender of the Son and raises Him in His human body to eternal glory.
This is the only answer to the question of death, to the fear of death, to the culture of death. A living faith in
Jesus Christ the Son of the living God is the only way to exit from the prospect of eternal nothingness, from idolatry in
all its forms, from the enslaving demands of man-made self-sufficiency.
But Jesus Himself had to go through the pangs of death. Otherwise He would not have saved us in what is most intimately
ours, i.e. our own humanity. It follows that if we are to share in what is most intimately His, i.e. His divinity truly united
to our humanity, then we must approach death with the attitudes, with the certainties and above all with the love of Jesus.
Our faith, hope and love in Him give us the ability to do so. These we received the day we were baptized, even though they
may often seem dormant within us. On that day we were not only cleansed of original sin, but as it were, inserted into that
Body, into that Jesus in that Body, who died for us and rose again. Baptism really makes us one with Christ and with each
other because of Him. And if it makes us one in Him, then it means that our personal suffering and dying are somehow His very
own and the Church’s very own. Even more importantly, His suffering and dying become ours, the Church’s, to the
point that just as the Israelites passed through a corridor between the raging waters, so we in dying pass through the “corridor”
of the death of Jesus, who protects us from the raging powers of hell and leads us to the Promised Land.
Certainly, “during His life on earth, in the flesh”, Jesus too suffered the fear of death, “and offered
prayers and supplications with loud cries and tears to the One who was able to save Him from death.” Jesus Himself says:
“now my soul is troubled, but shall I ask God to spare me facing and going through death? How can I? I have come for
this very reason: to lead the way through the waters of death in order to bring the hosts of my Fathers beloved children,
the holy Church, my Bride, into eternal glory.” Jesus knew the torment that awaited Him, but He despised it and fixed
His attention on the glory to come afterwards. Not just the glory of the hero who defies death to its face, but the glory
of the Savior and Redeemer who destroys death itself for ever. This is the new and everlasting covenant written on our hearts:
that we, by baptism and faith, by obedience and reverence, by prayer, by suffering and by weeping, become one with Him in
living, dying, rising and ascending into heaven. This oneness or covenant is not just for people of one race or color, but
for all who will believe in Him. The power and unity of the Church do not come from clever organization but from the crucified,
risen and ascended Lord: it is a unity across time and space, a unity between heaven, earth and purgatory, it is a unity in
God, it is the unity of God - this is why it can never be broken or lost, no matter what we do!
Today’s Gospel begins with some Greeks looking for Jesus and ends with these glorious words of Jesus: “when
I am lifted up from the earth, I will draw all men to myself.” Jesus perceived in the request of the Greeks a sign that
His death was near and that His mission was already beginning to be accomplished. Hence the profound yet simple truth of His
words: “unless a wheat grain fall to the ground and die it remains but a single grain, but if it dies it yields an abundant
harvest.” In Jesus, death has become not just the end of mortal life, as if it were now suspended in nothingness -that
would be the grain that would not fall!- but the effective means to a new and eternal fertility, an abundant harvest. Jesus
saw in His mind’s eye that by entering the Red Sea Himself and opening up the corridor of dry ground by his death, all
who followed Him would be drawn in behind Him and with Him, right to the throne of God. This is oh so different from being
drawn in to the water like Narcissus!
The kind of death Jesus died does not just refer to his being lifted up on a Cross. It also means, like the
harvest, being lifted up from the grave in the Resurrection and being lifted up to Heaven in the Ascension. It therefore means
an eternally fruitful death, not just for Himself but for all who become one with Him. It is by Jesus’ death that Mary
would be lifted up body and soul into heaven and, on the last day, when all who are truly judged as belonging to Christ, will
be lifted up to the Heavenly Jerusalem.
Jesus invites us not to deny death, but rather, as our mortal life proceeds, to approach it and await its arrival in
the memory and in the strength of His own death. It was not a wasteful end to a meaningless existence, but the final act of
self-giving love which would bring abundant life and give eternal meaning to a mortal existence lived in passionate surrender
to “Abba!”, His dear Father, and to us, his dear brethren and his friends.
May the war end soon and may no more lives be lost, but let us learn from this tragic opportunity how to renew our
faith in the living power of our baptism and, in the light of the Gospel, how to grow in spiritual maturity as we await our
time to fall to the ground and die, and as we await our immortality as part of the abundant harvest Jesus the Redeemer will
reap in for the eternal wedding banquet of Heaven.
Msgr. P. Magee
St. Matthew’s
Cathedral
April 6th,
2003 - 10.00 am Mass
